I don't have a pair to compare to but in my other hobby of cologne, you get a lot of counterfeits of expensive frags like Creeds and Tom Fords. They usually have several things in common

1. Look for spelling or grammar mistakes on the outer box. Check the edges of text to make sure it's sharp. Silk screening should raise a bump slightly where you touch it and it should not flake off with a light scratch from a fingernail.

2. If the instructions are in a different language that doesn't usually mean much. Sometimes they sell them very cheaply because they are grey market, destined for a foreign market like Dubai, but they are cheaper in Dubai than here, so somebody buys up the stock and sells them on ebay. You get the real deal, just no warranty.

3. Check the stitching! Anything that has stitching on it, like the edges of the pleather ear pads, the stitches should be consistent, evenly spaced, and the seams should be finished, not uneven and jaggedly cut.

4. If you take the earpad cover off and pop a driver out you can get the part number of it without having to desolder anything. Look that part number up or compare with another owner.

Some of the ways I've spotted fake Sony MDR-V6's.

1. The silken material that lines the box is glued haphazardly without a smooth seam at the edges.

2. The SONY logo and checkerbox pattern where it says "Digital" has rough edges and looks inconsistent, the boxes look blurry and misaligned instead of razor sharp and perfectly spaced and aligned.

3. The headband covering bunches up when the headphones are taken off and allowed to clamp on themselves. The real Sony's had a wrinkle free headband whether it was on or off your head.

4. The SONY logo on the bag should be raised up from the silk screening and you can feel it with your finger tips.

5. The headphone length adjustments have numbers and notches that don't line up on fakes but do on the real hardware.

Is your camera playing tricks here or is the quality of the paint and the silver ring that bad in person? If this is a new headphone, I doubt audio technica would ship a headphone out looking like this and this would be the biggest indicator to me as to whether they are fakes or not.

Edit: Based on your other picture of the earcups it looks like it just might look bad because of your camera and the way this picture was taken. I don't see anything else that pops out to me as being off but I'm not an expert on the M50s and Kodhifi's advice above is good.

Is your camera playing tricks here or is the quality of the paint and the silver ring that bad in person? If this is a new headphone, I doubt audio technica would ship a headphone out looking like this and this would be the biggest indicator to me as to whether they are fakes or not.

Edit: Based on your other picture of the earcups it looks like it just might look bad because of your camera and the way this picture was taken. I don't see anything else that pops out to me as being off but I'm not an expert on the M50s and Kodhifi's advice above is good.

And no it just cold marks.. like a cold drink that gets wet on the outside (on the silver ring) but the plastic itself looks fine i think

a) the quality of plastic is not good, it looks as if it failed to pass the quality check. You will not find mistakes with original ones, everything is well firmed.

b) right & left channel are reversed (sometimes they are ok). If you want to keep them you will have to open the left side and solder the cable correctly.

c) the ear-pads are not stable, they spin around every time & you have to correct their position, also the original ear-pads are softer, the fake ones are hard.

d) use a multimeter to measure the resistance of each channel. The original ones are 38 Ohm per channel, the fake ones are 29-31 ohm. If they came from the same factory they are definitely factory seconds.

This causes unbalanced sound & music sounds louder to the one channel that has the lowest resistance.

e) lettering is faded on the fake ones.

f) The good part is that they sound good even if they are fake ones. I have the original also. The fake ones empasize the mid frequencies a bit. You can put some thin acoustic foam to make things better. Overall the fake ones can be the "i don't care throwing away every day use all weather 50$ worth headphones"